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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 7651101" data-attributes="member: 14159">Here's why subscriptions have a limiting factor. . .I've got 2 bookcases full of gaming books.  1st through 3.5 editions of D&D, WotC and WEG Star Wars, White Wolf, LUG Trek, GURPS, lots and lots of stuff.  I've got boxes and boxes of miniatures for many settings and genres (and game mats and scenery for them), I've got pounds of dice.  I've got dozens and dozens of issues of the late, great Dragon Magazine on my shelves.   Thanks to real-life, I've barely been able to play at all in the last few years (and I post here way less often than I used to), and I've only bought a few books for a few games.  If I had to pay a subscription to keep playing, I'd probably have lost all that, and instead of looking at those shelves of books and browsing them, I'd just walk away from the hobby.Among the many reasons I had nothing to do with 4e was that WotC made it clear that to play it, you were expected to have a subscription to DDI to play.It's not a "losing battle" to want to buy something instead of subscribe to it.  Funny thing is, that roleplaying games are a luxury item, and the ones already in circulation are durable items.  I could game every free night I had for the rest of my life and never have to buy another gaming product from anybody.  There are still people out there playing older editions of D&D who haven't bought anything new in a decade or more (or decades).Also, with a subscription if the creating company collapses, you lose the game.  How many RPG's have you liked that the company folded?  Even if the company doesn't fold, if it's a licensed game then the license itself might expire after a while for the company and the game go away.In the Microsoft Office example, you think people won't go to OpenOffice or other competitors if they don't like having to pay MS every month?  That or use pirate copies of older editions, which are ridiculously easy to get.  A corporate IT department might have no problem with a subscription, but you really think that typical end-users want (or can afford) a monthly Microsoft subscription?My wife's laptop died a couple of months ago.  She went out and bought a new one. . .and has hated Win8 with an undying passion.  Among the reasons, the few games included apparently require an XBox Live subscription (so she tells me).  It's asking her to pay money to pay games she's already paid for by buying the computer and OS.  If the "industry" wants to move to a subscription based model, it better be prepared to deal with the consequences such as permanently chasing away lapsed fans, more casual fans, and people who don't have money to spend every single month.  You might think that this is nothing, after all, they weren't spending a lot of money to begin with, but they are part of the community, and you're helping to chase away community members and break up the community.  Don't expect subscription based RPG's to have the same widespread community support when everybody in the community has to pay a fee just to be a member.</blockquote>

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